Page 90 of Night Watch
“I say we send out a scouting party before approaching,” Drake said.
“You and I can go.” Erik made sure the internal lights wouldn’t turn on when they opened their doors and slid out.
He felt for his weapon and tucked his shirt behind it for easy access. Drake did the same.
The moon and stars illuminated the long drive. They needed to be careful not to be seen. He pointed at the trees along the drive and headed into them. He paused near a large flowering shrub scenting the air with a sweetness he found overpowering. He grabbed the binoculars from Drake to take a good look at the house.
“Still no movement,” Erik said. “We need to get closer to the front porch to take a look.”
“Risk being exposed.”
“If you were hunting a fugitive, would you risk it?”
“Heck, yeah.” Drake grinned.
“Then I’m going in. You stay here.” Erik jetted across the drive and ducked low to make his way to the porch. He popped up, binoculars in hand, but couldn’t get a good look through the big picture window.
The door was ajar.
Had something bad happened here?
He had to get a look through that window.
He started up the stairs to the porch. Reached the top and froze.
Man, oh, man.
He clamped a hand over his nose and mouth.
No point in going any further. The stench coming from the house told him everything he needed to know right now, and he backed away to call in a deputy.
Someone was dead in this house and had been for some time. Likely Dash Gordon.
Hopes ruined, Erik waited on the tailgate of the SUV for a local detective to arrive. Thankfully they’d parked far away from the house and couldn’t catch the smell of death that was oozing out of the open door. His brothers hung with him, the tone oddly somber for the group. Erik had hoped Gordon would give them answers. Nope. Didn’t happen. The guy created more questions.
The first responding deputy had gone inside the house to confirm what they’d suspected. Gordon had died. He’d taken two bullets to the chest at close range, and the house had been ransacked.
The deputy said Gordon appeared to have been tortured, his fingers mutilated. Teeth pulled. This investigation had suddenly gotten ugly. Very ugly. Erik couldn’t be happier that Kennedy was safely settled in his condo with Aiden.
The deputy was young, and this was his first dead body. He was alone, freaked out, and needed to talk. So Erik told him that, as a former officer, he understood, and the kid unloaded every detail of the scene. Erik doubted he’d get any additional details from the responding detective when he arrived.
On the bright side, with Gordon obviously having been murdered, Erik finally had strong reason to believe Wanda had been murdered too. Different MO for sure, and maybe different killers, but this death cast a suspicious cloud over hers.
Erik’s phone rang, and he answered the call from Sierra. “I’m putting you on speaker. Everyone’s here except Aiden and Kennedy.”
“I just got off the phone with Detective Johnson,” she said. “He gave me permission to share the results for the evidence we turned in to him. Grady’s done running ballistics on the gun we recovered, and I processed the prints for that and the bullets in the clip. Plus prints from the casings at the ambush. They all match, and they also match the unknown print I lifted at Wanda’s place.”
Erik let the information sink in. “So he’s our guy, whoeverheis.”
“Yes, and Johnson now has all of the evidence, and he’ll be running the prints through AFIS.”
As a police officer, Erik had used the Automated Fingerprint Identification System—a database holding fingerprints from most law enforcement agencies and was managed by the FBI. “Anything else?”
“Two things. First, I’m still waiting on the footprints at the river to fully cure so I can make a positive determination. And second, the hair I recovered at Wanda’s house was dyed. Less than a centimeter between root and color change suggests that the hair was dyed less than a month ago. I’m trying to determine the color and brand of the dye, but that could take some time. Also the sample had a flat-cut end, telling me he’d recently had a haircut.”
“So our guy dyed and cut his hair.” Erik came to his feet when he spotted an unmarked car pull up the drive. “Maybe as a disguise.”
“He’s a natural blond. Isn’t it amazing what a single hair can tell you about a suspect?” Sierra’s enthusiasm for her job shone through her tone.
